Milton and the preaching arts

by Jameela Lares

"This study truly breaks new ground in Milton scholarship by demonstrating the extent to which Milton's work reflects the dominant discourse of his age - preaching.". "During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the pulpit consistently commanded greater audiences than did the stage, and many of the era's great poets were also preachers. Milton himself argued that poetry can serve "beside the office of a pulpit" and prepared for his life's work at the greatest English center for formal homiletics of its time, Christ's College, Cambridge, but this connection has been virtually ignored by scholars and critics in examining Milton's poetry.". "Lares now challenges the longstanding assumption that Milton the poet paid no attention to the ministerial training of his past, and she demonstrates how Milton appropriated many structures from English preaching in his own work. That preaching was informed by five sermon types - doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction and consolation - first e